Nasa has outdone itself by enlisting Star Trek and
Twitter royalty to explain the Curiosity rover's impending descent
to Mars in a video entitled Grand Entrance.

Original hero William Shatner and Star Trek: The Next
Generation actor, colossal geek and Twitter superstar Wil Wheaton
each take viewers through the "seven minutes of terror", an
extraordinarily narrow window which will see Nasa's largest ever
rover go from more than 20,000km/h to landing.

It is quite the coup for Nasa to get not one, but two sci-fi
legends onboard to explain how this historic landing will see Curiosity's heat shield reach
temperatures of more than 1,600C and how, after thrusters direct it
to Gale Crater, its sky crane will drop from a parachute about one
and a half kilometres above Mars' surface, fire dramatically up
into the air and lower the rover gently to the surface. The whole
process will employ 76 pyrotechnic explosions to guide and control
the descent.

Through every bump and shock, Shatner's dulcet, hushed tones
draw the viewer in, till they are in the palm of his hand for the
explanation of why Nasa is investigating Mars' 96-metre-wide Gale
Crater.

"The crater's rock layers were laid down and then eroded,
showing us a cross-section of Mars' history," says Shatner. "Liquid
water was necessary to form the geology we've seen from orbit, and
that makes Gale Crater a great place to look for evidence of places
that could have once [pause for dramatic effect] harboured
life."

This nuclear-powered one-ton robot will take us ever closer to
examining deep layers of history and, perhaps, closer to an answer
to the ancient question -- was there ever life [dramatic pause] on
Mars?"

Wheaton probably beats Shatner in terms of intonation though --
throwing out words like "spectacular", "descent" and "great" with
impressive theatrical prowess. Curiosity "looking for the surface"
comes with an inquisitive bewilderment, getting across The Man
Who Fell to Earth star's pure amazement at the engineering
behind the rover's seemingly impossible feat, and his "was there
ever life on Mars?" really leaves you wondering...

Curiosity, powered by a radioisotope system, is due to spend two
Earth years' probing Mars' surface and collecting samples to
investigate in its on-board lab, which has more instruments than
any other rover to have explored the planet. Looking for signs of
life, past or present, is its main purpose, along with taking
weather and radiation readings. Knowledge of these, Shatner and
Wheaton remind us, are "key to sending humans there one
day".

This is not the first time that Shatner has leant his dulcet
tones to Nasa. In 1989 his dulcent tones were used by the Discovery
crew to wake mission control, along with the theme tune from Star
Trek.

The epic descent will be broadcast live (with a 14 minute time delay) to an audience of
200 at London's Natural History Museum at 6am on 6 August, 2012.
But, for now, the more pressing issue is the question of just which
sci-fi hero has most inspired you to buy a ticket and tune in --
the man who coined the phrase "don't be a dick" (Wheaton's
Law) in the gaming world, or the man who, well, makes just
about everything sound cool.

Comments

A connundrum for you head planet guys... Mars atmosphere is 100 times less dense than earths. Almost a vacuum then. So whats with the "1600 degree heat shield" ( atmosphere friction required ) or the chute ( atmosphere in billowing great bagloads required ).Connundrum 2. All previous Mars lander pics show a bright sky. With hardly any atmosphere the sky should be very very.... like DARK!